


It's a Draw and Everybody Wins

by Scrawlers



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bom!Lotor, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Romance, Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 22:52:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14681129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: After discovering a box of Pocky in the Blade of Marmora's pantry, Keith and Lotor decide to try playing the Pocky Game. That is, if either of them can figure out how.





	It's a Draw and Everybody Wins

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written a few days ago, and was inspired by [this ask](https://lctor.tumblr.com/post/173843820814/i-read-that-as-swords-in-mouths-and-the-first). To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what “sword pocky” means, but Keith and Lotor don’t know what it means either, so it works.
> 
> This takes place in an AU where Lotor joined the Blade of Marmora, but it’s not really part of my _Dual Blades_ series (mostly just because that series is following a specific narrative and this wouldn’t really fit; if anything, it’s like an AU of that AU—AUception). The briefly mentioned Garus is a galra / Marmorite OC of mine, who does a lot of administrative work for the BoM and to be honest moms everyone. He just wants to make sure everyone is taken care of, and wants to make sure Keith feels welcome (and also takes care of himself; Garus is very particular about making sure Keith takes care of himself).

It was the bright red color of the boxes standing stark among the muted colors of the other food containers in the pantry that caught Keith’s eye. They stood out, bright and attention-grabbing enough that it took a second for the rest of his brain to catch up. But when it did, and he looked at the small row of boxes properly, a bemused smile crossed his face as he plucked one from the shelf.

“This is Earth candy,” he said aloud, and as the answer to the question he hadn’t yet asked clicked in his mind, he sighed and said, “Garus.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate Garus. He did.  _Everyone_ in the Blade did, for all the work Garus did for them. But it was a little . . . exasperating, kind of, the way Garus was so . . . the way he went  _out_ of his way to try and do things for Keith. It wasn’t that Keith didn’t appreciate it, the way that Garus went and purchased giant tubs of several different ice cream flavors after Keith said that he liked ice cream  _once_ , or the way that Earth snacks such as the Pocky Keith now held in his hands just mysteriously appeared in the pantry. He appreciated all that Garus did for him. But it wasn’t necessary, and Keith didn’t really like the idea of someone going out of their way like that for him. It made him feel a little . . . uncomfy, especially since he didn’t know what he could possibly do to pay Garus back. But there was no easy way to say that without sounding ungrateful and risking hurting Garus’ feelings, so there he stood, holding the box of Pocky in his hands, feeling awkward, embarrassed, and weirdly touched all at once.

Lotor, who had ventured to the pantry with him to get a snack of his own, closed the distance between them and looked at the box over his shoulder. “What is it?”

“Pocky,” Keith said, and he held the box out to Lotor, who took it to examine it more closely. “I was wrong, it’s—it’s not really a candy. It’s more like a biscuit stick thing. It is from Earth, though.”

“Is it any good?” Lotor asked, flipping the box over to scan the ingredients list on the back.

Keith shrugged. “It’s all right. I never really ate a lot of it back on Earth. It was really popular in school, though, and at the Garrison. People would play a game with it.”

Lotor looked up, and the second their eyes met Keith knew what he was going to ask before he said it. It was that spark, that  _glint_ in his eye that told Keith all he needed to know. “What sort of game?”

“I, uh . . . I don’t really know.” Keith rubbed the back of his neck. “No one ever wanted to play with me, so . . .”

Lotor frowned, watching him for a second longer before he looked back at the box. “I cannot speak for those on Earth,” he said after a moment, “but I would be interested in playing this game with you, should we figure out the rules.”

Keith felt a warm flush spread over his skin, his heart skipping a couple erratic beats. It was stupid; even as he stood there, feeling suddenly warm while his heart acted like it was playing jump rope, he didn’t know  _why_ he was reacting like that. He really didn’t know the rules of the game; he didn’t know if there was any reason to feel embarrassed, or nervous, or excited about it. But even if he didn’t know, Lotor was interested in playing, and . . . well, he wanted to play it  _with Keith_. They hung out all the time, but somehow . . . well, it was still nice to hear that Lotor  _wanted_ to.

“Oh, well, it’s just—they’re just candy,” Keith said, and when Lotor looked back up to meet his eyes, amended, “or cookies, or whatever. Whatever the game is, the rules probably aren’t that complicated.”

“Hmm.” Lotor glanced back at the box for only a second before he looked back to Keith. “Shall we give it a try, then?”

“Sure,” Keith said, and he couldn’t help but grin a little, even as his cheeks felt even warmer, as he said, “We can take it back to my room.”

“Your room?” Lotor asked, and when Keith nodded, added, “Why?”

Keith’s smile fell. “If you don’t want to, we don’t have to. We can go somewhere else. Your room, or—”

“I’m not opposed to playing in your room,” Lotor interrupted, “I’m only curious as to why. Does this need to be played in private?”

Keith paused, unsure, for a moment, how to answer. Finally, he said, “It was back on Earth, I think. People usually—I don’t know. I heard it got played at parties sometimes, but . . .” He shrugged. “I think it’s something two people do together, usually away from others. But we don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“If that is how it’s done on Earth, I’m not opposed,” Lotor said, and he gestured toward the door of the pantry. “Lead the way.”

Keith did as requested, and they made their way toward his room in relative silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable; periods of silence weren’t unheard of between them, and Keith himself wasn’t the type of person who needed a conversation to occupy every second of the day to feel at ease. But even so, his heart didn’t feel any calmer than it had back in the pantry, and a nervous energy had him tapping his fingers against his legs while they waited for the elevator. He just wished he knew  _why_. He wracked his brain, but he honestly couldn’t remember if he’d ever heard the rules for the Pocky Game before or not. He didn’t think he had. He had never played it, he knew that much, but he didn’t remember much of what he’d heard about it, either. It had never been interesting to him.

Until now, anyway.

When they made it to his room, Keith entered first, and the door slid shut behind Lotor. Keith dropped onto his bed, and Lotor sat down beside him before he slid his finger under the lid of the box and pulled one pouch free.

“So,” Lotor said, his tone conversational as he opened the top of the pouch, “how do you believe this game is played?”

“Uh . . .” Keith slid one of the Pocky sticks out of the pouch, holding the non-chocolate part of it gingerly between two fingers. “Well, I think we have to put it in our mouths.”

“That would make sense, given that it is food,” Lotor said, and he selected a Pocky stick for himself. Keith watched, curious beyond reason, as Lotor turned the Pocky stick this way and that to examine it. After a second, he put the chocolate end of it in his mouth, his lips closing around it.

Keith looked back at the stick he held in his own hands.

“And then, uh . . . I don’t know,” he said. As Lotor had before him, Keith put the tip of the chocolate part in his mouth. It was sweet; it almost tasted like dark chocolate, which in Keith’s opinion had always tasted sweeter (and better) than white or milk chocolate, despite everyone he had ever met telling him that he was objectively wrong about that. “But they’re sticks, so . . . maybe it’s like a sword thing?”

Lotor paused in sucking on the Pocky stick, and took it out of his mouth just long enough to ask, “A sword thing?”

“Yeah. Like, we put the Pocky sticks in our mouths, and then spar with them.” Even as he said it, Keith felt like an idiot, and warmth flooded through his cheeks up to his ears, and spread across the back of his neck. “That’s stupid, forget it—”

“No,” Lotor said, but even as he returned the Pocky to his mouth, Keith could swear his lips were twitching into a smile. “That is as good a guess as any. Let’s try it.”

“Seriously?” Keith asked, and when Lotor nodded, Keith felt a smile of his own tugging at his lips. “Okay, let’s give it a shot.”

He grabbed the chocolate end of his own stick of Pocky between his teeth, and scooted closer on the mattress so the ends of their sticks of Pocky could touch. For a moment they sat still, the ends of their Pocky lightly pressed together, Keith’s just a little higher than Lotor’s; then, with a jerk of his head, Keith attempted to knock his stick against Lotor’s.

He missed.

Not to be deterred, Lotor lifted his own chin to bat his Pocky against Keith’s. Lotor’s “attack” connected, but all he succeeded in doing was knocking Keith’s Pocky up, so that some of the now-melting chocolate smeared across Keith’s lip. Keith reflexively pulled his Pocky from his mouth so that he could swipe his tongue against the chocolate it had left behind on his skin.

Lotor hummed thoughtfully as he pulled his own Pocky from his mouth. “I’m far from an expert on this particular subject, but I’m getting the feeling this is not how this particular game is meant to be played.”

“Yeah,” Keith agreed, and he sighed. “Me, too. Sorry.”

“What for?” Lotor asked. Keith shrugged, and apparently seeing that he wasn’t going to get anything more than that, Lotor said, “Why don’t we try running a GalaNet search? That may return something useful.”

“You think the GalaNet will have something on it? It’s a game from Earth,” Keith said.

Lotor shrugged. “This is a snack from Earth, isn’t it? Yet Garus was able to acquire it. It’s not impossible for one of our websites to have some information on it.”

“Good point.” Keith bent over his bed to pull out the tablet Kolivan had given him when he had first joined the Blade, and after rousing the device from Sleep Mode, double-tapped to open one of the browsers.

It had been months since he had been given a tablet and discovered the GalaxyNet (or, as most called it, GalaNet), but even now, he still couldn’t really believe it existed. It made sense, he guessed; the technology that so many civilizations had out in the universe easily outstripped what they had back on Earth, even allowing for the technological strides that had allowed for things like holograms and his hoverbike to exist. With everything the galra, olkari, and other space-based civilizations had accomplished, it was weirder to think they  _wouldn’t_ have their version of the internet. Even so, every time he opened a web browser that, in his opinion, suspiciously resembled Google Chrome, he still felt a thrill of the surreal. The GalaNet had a built-in search engine. It had an open source encyclopedia called AlterPedia. It had social media websites, and video viewing websites. His first official night with the Blade after he left Team Voltron, he had watched yupper videos on VisuTube for  _two hours_ before he fell asleep, and while that couldn’t fix anything, it . . . had made him feel a little better. But the main takeaway was still that it felt weird. It made sense, and he was glad it existed, but it felt weird as he sat there on his bed, Lotor beside him, running a search for the Pocky Game to see if any sites on the GalaNet knew anything about it.

Lo and behold, Keith’s eyes widened when the very first result was an AlterHow article detailing how to play the game, step-by-step.

“Well,” Lotor said, and when Keith glanced over, he saw that Lotor was smiling, “fortune seems to be in our favor.”

“Yeah,” Keith said, as he tapped to open the article. “Seems to be.” He paused, then glanced over at Lotor again as he said, “You can just eat that, if you want. We’ll probably want new sticks to play with.”

Lotor shrugged, but nonetheless stuck his Pocky back in his mouth to take a bite. “By all means,” he said once he had swallowed, “you’re free to do the same.”

“Yeah, I know,” Keith said, and he stuck his own Pocky back in his mouth as he scanned the AlterHow article.

The thing about AlterHow—and sites like it back on Earth—was that it often (in Keith’s experience, anyway) overcomplicated things. The AlterHow article on the Pocky Game was eight steps long, complete with illustrations. Keith skimmed it as he munched on his Pocky, Lotor looking over his shoulder, and when he reached the end (and his eyes glanced over what the article claimed was a potential outcome of the game), he quickly switched his tablet back into Sleep Mode before he slid it back under his bed.

“I didn’t have a chance to read the last item,” Lotor said. He had finished his Pocky, and Keith swallowed the last bite of his own before he turned back.

“No problem. I got the gist,” Keith said. He picked up the box that Lotor had left on the mattress, and slid one stick free from the pouch inside. “It’s like Chicken.”

“Chicken?”

“Yeah. That’s another game back on Earth. There are a couple different ways to play it, but the basic gist is that two people get closer to each other until one of them backs off. The first one to give up and pull back loses. And it doesn’t always have to be two people. You can play it with trains and stuff, too. You know, stand on the tracks while the train gets closer, and the longer you manage to hold out before jumping off the tracks nets you more points.” He paused, then added, “In that case you lose if the train hits you. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Lotor agreed. He reached out and tapped the end of the fresh Pocky stick Keith was holding with his finger. “So in our case, how does the Pocky factor in?”

Once again, Keith felt heat creeping up along the back of his neck. “Uh, well, each of us takes one end of the Pocky stick in our mouths, and then we start eating it. This brings us closer together . . . and the first one to back off loses.”

“I see.” Their eyes met, and Lotor flashed a smirk. “Well, given our previous duel, I imagine this will be a rather swift victory for me.”

Keith frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean? What are you talking about?”

“We dueled with the Pocky just a few doboshes ago, and you gave up almost immediately,” Lotor said, and his smirk widened as Keith glared at him. “If that’s any indication of your determination to win this game, I expect a similar result.”

“That was different,” Keith said shortly. “I got distracted by the chocolate melting against my lips, that’s all.”

“We’ll see,” Lotor said, a teasing—baiting,  _goading_ —lilt to his voice.

Keith held the Pocky out toward him, chocolate end first. “Yeah. We will.”

Lotor’s smirk didn’t fade as he leaned forward (tucking his hair behind his ear as he did so, to stop it from falling across his face) and gently took the end of the Pocky between his teeth. Keith did the same, and the moment he did, something in his stomach gave a little flip. The Pocky was—the AlterHow article had made it seem longer, had made it seem like there’d be more distance between them. But Pocky sticks really weren’t that long. Already, even with both of them just biting the very tips of the Pocky between their teeth, they were only ten inches apart.

“Ready?” Lotor asked, the word a bit distorted around the biscuit he held between his lips.

Their faces were only ten inches apart, and Keith’s heart felt light and fluttery in his chest, but he locked eyes with Lotor all the same and replied, “You bet.”

The game was over in seconds, but not because either of them gave up.

The Pocky was short. That was the problem—it was so  _small_. It took only a couple bites for them to reach the middle, rather than the long, drawn out Chicken matches Keith was used to. In only three bites he had reached the middle, and so had Lotor, and there they sat, frozen, their noses touching, their lips millimeters apart.

“Well,” Lotor murmured. They were so close his lips brushed Keith’s when he talked. “It seems we have reached an impasse.”

“Mmhm.”

“What do you suppose we do next?”

“I . . .” Keith’s mind felt like static. He had to focus, but it was  _hard_ ; the only thing he could focus on was how Lotor’s lips brushed his with every word. “. . . don’t know.”

Lotor chuckled, low and breathy and  _so close._ “You should have read the rest of the AlterHow article.”

Keith frowned. “I read enough.”

“Perhaps,” Lotor replied, “but if you’re unsure how we should proce—”

Keith didn’t really have to move. He barely had to lean forward at all. Lotor’s lips were already brushing his as he talked, they were already  _that close_ —but Lotor stopped talking, he  _had_ to, when Keith’s lips pressed against his.

Keith’s eyes closed instinctively when their lips met, when Lotor’s voice cut out in a small, startled sound, so he wasn’t sure how, exactly, Lotor felt about it—how he reacted, in the split second it happened. But as his mouth moved against Lotor’s, he felt  _Lotor’s_ move against  _his_ ; Lotor, too, leaned forward, just as Keith had, applying equal pressure, and he—they were—it was the game, it was  _the game_ , but Keith felt a little lightheaded, a little breathless, and exhilarated as their mouths moved in tandem. It wasn’t until Keith felt Lotor’s tongue swipe along his lip that he broke the kiss with a sharp intake of breath, and sat back on the mattress.

For a moment, all Keith could do was sit there, staring at Lotor. His heart was thundering so rapidly in his chest he felt like it was going to bruise his ribs.

He had . . .  _they_ had . . .

He had kissed Lotor. And Lotor had kissed him back.

It was part of the game—it was just part of the game. But Lotor hadn’t read that far in the AlterHow article, and Keith had barely allowed  _himself_ to read it. And he could have given up, he could have backed down, he could have—

But he didn’t. He kissed Lotor. And Lotor kissed him back.  _They kissed_ , and it was just part of the game, but . . .  _they kissed._

Lotor was sitting as still as Keith was, and while Keith had no way of knowing what he was thinking, he looked to be in as much shock. He gingerly touched his fingers to his lips, as if trying to process what had just happened, but after a prolonged moment of silence he lowered his hand to his lap. Without looking at Keith, he said, “You pulled away first.”

Keith’s mouth dropped open. He continued to stare at Lotor, and when Lotor said nothing more, sputtered, “That’s—you— _seriously_?”

Lotor looked up at last, his eyes meeting Keith’s own, and he raised his eyebrows. “Do you deny it?”

“I—no, but I also moved forward first,” Keith said. “You stopped moving. If anything, since I made the first move after we reached the middle, I win.”

“But you pulled away before I did,” Lotor said. “According to the rules of the game, that means you lose.”

“Not when I moved forward first,” Keith insisted.

“Hmm.”

Having regained his composure, Lotor studied Keith for a moment—and only a moment—before his lips twitched. He reached across the mattress and picked up the Pocky box, only to draw another stick from it. He twirled it between his fingers once before he held it out, the chocolate end toward Keith.

“Since it seems that we’ve once again reached an impasse, would you like to go again? We’ll mark this first match as a draw, and declare the winner best two out of three.” A proper smirk unfurled on his lips, his eyes glinting. “What do you say?”

Despite how honestly indignant he felt when all Lotor had to say after they kissed was to claim that he had won their game, Keith’s heart hadn’t slowed its rapid and forceful pace inside his chest. His every nerve was tingling, and as he and Lotor looked at each other now—as Lotor’s eyes shined, a smirk on his lips, waggling the proffered Pocky stick just so—he couldn’t bite back the smile that spread across his own face in response to Lotor’s grin.

“You’re on,” he said, and leaned forward to take the end of the Pocky stick between his teeth.

 


End file.
